In the manufacture of cheese, milk is processed in batches to form curd which is separated from the remaining liquid or whey and compressed into blocks or sometimes cylindrical shapes. The blocks are placed in a salt bath or brining solution which cools and salts the cheese. Depending upon the amount of time the cheese blocks spend in the brine solution and the type of cheese being produced, the brine bath may form a characteristic rind on the exterior of the cheese block. After a period of time which may range from hours to days depending on the type of cheese, the cheese is removed from the brining solution, dried, and cured or otherwise processed before shipment to the consumer.
Because brining of cheese often will require the cheese to soak in a tank of brine for several days, a substantial portion of the floor space of a cheese factory can be taken up by the brine tanks required to hold several days, cheese production. Cheese will float in a typical brine solution which is 70-80 percent saturated with salt. Until recently, cheese was brined in large shallow open tanks built into the factory floor. These shallow tanks would contain a single layer of floating cheese blocks which would be turned from time to time or be sprayed with a salt solution to ensure that all surfaces of the cheese blocks were exposed to the brining solution. An improvement on the shallow tank cheese brining system utilizes relatively deep cheese brining tanks or pits in combination with multi-shelved racks on which the cheese blocks are loaded. When fully loaded each rack is lowered into the brining tank for brining by means of an overhead crane.
This system of cheese brining was further improved to include the float loading of the cheese blocks onto the racks. The cheese blocks are floated in a stream of moving brine which transports the cheese blocks into the individual shelves of the rack as it is progressively submerged in the brining tank.
These developments in cheese brining systems have reduced the floor space required to be devoted to cheese brining tanks in a cheese factory. However, cheese brining tanks still occupy a considerable area in the typical cheese factory in part because the brining tanks are not efficiently filled with cheese in that the shelves of the racks must be spaced a considerable distance apart to allow the easy float loading and unloading of the cheese.
The open brine tank also is a source of maintenance problems in that fine salt particles are emitted by the open brine tanks. These salt particles cause salt corrosion of nearby equipment. Therefore, by keeping the surface area of the tanks small and by placing critical equipment a distance from the tanks, this problem is minimized. In existing dairies where upgrades in the cheese making equipment have increased the rate of production, it has hithertofor not been possible to increase the cheese brining capability without a greater cheese brining tank area or a deeper cheese brining tank requiring major facility modifications of the cheese factory.
What is needed is an apparatus for more densely loading cheese into a brining pit.